28 SEPTEMBER 1929, Page 17

' HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE [To the Editor of the

SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—Your issue of August 31st has a very interesting article under the above heading. It concludes with a quotation from the annual report of Sir George Newman. He writes : " Vaccination is our sheet-anchor against smallpox." That may be, but the anchor is buried in the ocean of experience, and there is no cable chain or capstan that connects it with good health. In the years 1871 and 1872, after eighteen years of compulsoiy vaccination, came the most fatal epidemic of smallpox ever known in England and Wales, and 42,000 persons died.of that ailment, and nine out of ten of the small- pox cases had been vaccinated. There was no Conscience Clause in those days, parents were fined repeatedly for the same child, and vaccination of the people was as complete as possible. This proved absolutely that vaccination was no protection at all against smallpox.

All experience from the beginning by Jenner in 1798 to the present time confirms the fact that vaccination gives no protection against smallpox. The statement that vaccina- tion protects is well described by an eminent doctor as a " grotesque superstition." But it is a deadly process. The Jenner method, practised for 100 years, gave syphilis and other horrid diseases, so it was stopped by the 1898 Vaccination Act.

The present method is equally deadly, and the Ministry of Health has just issued directions to modify the filthy process, because some honest medical men of eminence have pointed out " that from every scientific point of view it is bad."—I am, Sir, &c., ARNOLD LUPTON. 7 Victoria Street, London, S.W.1.